The present invention relates to camcorders and more particularly to a camcorder with an electronic still-photographing function, which performs the electronic still-photographing operation in photographing the image on a video tape or in playing back a recorded image in a video tape by including an electronic still-photographing circuit and a switching circuit.
Recently, camcorders which include both a video camera and a video tape recorder in a single body are widely available. Also electronic still cameras which store a particular still scene into an integrated circuit, and display it on a television monitor if necessary, are widely available.
But, in the past, there is no instrument which includes both the conventional camcorder and the electric still camera, and thus only a successive moving image was photographed, recorded and played back again by the camcorders. If the still scene, that is, the stopped scene is necessary, an additional electronic still camera is required in order to photograph the still scene and play it back. Thus, when the user cannot record both the successive scenes and the still scene, at the same time.
To solve these problems, an electronic camera which functions as a movie camera and as a still camera introduced in Japanese patent 58-3384 was invented, but this utilizes the same photographing memory for movie scenes and still scenes. Thus, the movie scene and still scene cannot be recorded at the same time and particularly a desired scene of the successive scenes can't be photographed as the still scene. Consequently, its applicable range is extremely restricted.